This short video gives some insight into the conditions and rigors facing cave divers John Taylor and Simon Cornhill in their exploration of Bagshawe Resurgence Cave. The limit of exploration is approximately 60m from base which doesn’t sound that far but the underwater passage is tight, awkward and unrelenting, and it takes the divers almost 15 minutes to reach the end. Towards the end of the video there’s a tantalising glimpse of an air surface just beyond an impassable restriction. Simon and John are currently digging and chiselling their way through to this.

The formations on this video are mind blowing, I hope to go here some day. For those of you who know me and ask why you would go cave diving, check out this video and all should become clear.. Apologies for the shite music (you know where the volume button is)

I took a deep breath and ducked my head under the water, the visibility was terrible, I couldn’t see my hands, nothing but a milky vista filled my vision. I ran my hands down the root of a tree and let the air out of my dry-suit. My video camera was running and I was conscious not to let it bang against the stone.. (after all I was using my “cheap” lens) as I descended downwards towards a place I had been told was there and that the visibility would improve.

Just as I was beginning to consider I had descended in the wrong place or had perhaps moved away from a vertical descent the water began to clear and a semi-circular dark opening loomed up at me. I flicked on my hand-mounted halogen light, checked my helmet-mounted Q40 and kicked my way gently into the little opening. The beginning of my first ever cave dive in France and the end of a long journey.Read the rest of this entry »

This is an amalgamation of two dives on the Thistlegorm wreck in the Red Sea, earlier in May 2009. Things have changed a lot since my first dive on it in 2001.

I would imagine that those lucky enough to have dived on it much earlier than me would be horrified at the state of it now. This was brough home to me when I recently watched the Jacques Cousteau movie Le Monde du Silence which contains footage of the wreck in 1955.. Very very different.